Urban Renewal Award
Finalist: Hout Bay River Development
Michelle Nel
Cape Town’s Hout Bay river is the last remaining river system linking Table Mountain to the sea that’s worth conserving as a resource of international significance.
With this in mind, and against the backdrop of much abuse to both river and valley over the past 400 years, concerned parties from the public sector and civil society have come together to form the Hout Bay Catchment Management Forum and reclaim the river.
The work is being guided by the Hout Bay River Development Framework, Management and Rehabilitation Plan.
It boasts tangible results, notably the recent restoration project from Princess road to the beach.This project was implemented by local contractors and coordinated by Cape-based environmental planning, urban design and landscape architecture practice Chittenden Nicks de Villiers.
“The lower river reach was previously an unsafe and unsightly area with massive invasion of alien trees and ongoing erosion of the river banks. Now we’ve largely restored the river’s natural functions and the results have been welcomed by the Hout Bay community, who use it for hiking, picnics, horse riding and birdwatching,” says Derek Chittenden, a partner at the practice.
There was a time when the Hout Bay river, whose main streams rise on top of Table Mountain, was navigable for about 1km from the sea. Beyond this were extensive forests with many rivulets; it was a stable and productive river system.
But over the years the forests of Hout Bay were almost entirely cut down for timber and firewood. The deforested areas were then used for agriculture and the river system was incrementally concentrated into a single channel.
Then followed the property developers, who filled Hout Bay with buildings, started filling in the vlei and dumped sewage into the system.
The management forum has brought together the Cape Metropolitan Council, South Peninsula Municipality, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, the Hout Bay and Llandudno Heritage Trust, ward planning committees, ratepayer’s associations and the Fairest Cape Association.
The aim is to work towards the establishment of a legally protected corridor from the Cape Peninsula National Park to the sea. Small steps have been taken towards this including an integrated catchment management plan and an awareness programme but perhaps the most meaningful is the restoration of the lower river.
“This restoration project shows how even with inappropriate urban development and environmental degradation, an area can be rehabilitated with the right human and financial resources,” says Chittenden.
The South Peninsula Municipality has carried out a number of maintenance and capital projects, including clearing sections of the river of silt and removing alien vegetation.
“The residents of the Hout Bay river valley have diverse environmental, social, political and economic aspirations,” says Chittenden. “Building a strong sense of catchment ownership has been important in the outreach programme.”
At a function, Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils summed things up when he said: “If our people are to learn to fish, proper catchment management is necessary. If they are going to teach their children to fish, we must make sure there are still fish for them to catch.”